This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Early Indigenous Literatures Main Menu The Child Who Would be Sovereign: Settler Colonial Frustrations and the Figure of the Child in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin's American Indian Stories By: Kai Chase Illicit Relations: The Challenges and Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Relations soumya rachel shailendra Legibility and Ambivalence in 19th Century Indigenous Women's Writing An exhibit on E. Pauline Johnson and Sarah Winnemucca by Emma Cohen Lyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettes by Kira Tucker Marriage and Empire in 19th Century Native American Women's Literature by Angad Singh Not-not blood quantum: the Dawes Act and ambivalent Indigeneity by Yasmin Yoon Reading Indigenous Authorial Presence in 18th- and 19th-century Paratexts Title Page for Isabel Griffith-Gorgati's Exhibit Resistance on and off the Page: A Collaborative Conversation between Black and Indigenous Literary Contributors Featuring James Printer, Katherine Garret, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant (17th-18th Century Early Print Culture Participants)- By Lauren Johnson Spiritual Armies, Resurrected Bones, and “Boundless” Continents: How Indigenous Activists in Early New England Reconfigured Puritan Millennialist Narratives Featuring texts of Samson Occom, William Apess, and the Wampanoag Bible. By Surya Milner Sovereignty or Removal: The Conflicting Indigenous Policies of 1835 in the Continental United States Julia Gilman What Does Water Do For Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes Region? Featuring Heid E. Erdrich, Simon Pokagon, Black Hawk, and Simon Kofe by Sarah Nisenson (Re)introducing Black Hawk and The Life (1833) BHR 1-Intro

The Trial Path (2)

41696

This page has annotations:

The trial is called by the sister Kai Chase
Contents of this annotation:
1. The Trial Path (2)
Reconciliation as ambivalent Kai Chase
Contents of this annotation:
1. The Trial Path (2)
Reconciliation through responsibility Kai Chase
Contents of this annotation:
1. The Trial Path (2)
The young woman as the most integral family member acceptance Kai Chase
Contents of this annotation:
1. The Trial Path (2)
The granddaughter responds in exclamation Kai Chase
Contents of this annotation:
1. The Trial Path (2)

This page is referenced by:

"The Trial Path": Relational Reproductions of Kinship To further complicate (non)biological kinship, I turn to Bonnin’s “The Trial Path.” The story is between an elder and her grandchild, who sits firmly atop a bed of sweetgrass as her grandmother tells of her family history. Following a young man who has killed his best friend/brother, “The Trial Path” shows the man going through a test which will determine whether he will be put to death for the murder.[1] Upon successfully completing the test, he is welcomed by the dead man’s family: “The old warrior father rises. Stepping forward two long strides, he grasps the hand of the murderer of his only son. Holding it so the people can see, he cries, with compassionate voice, ‘My son!’” (Bonnin 76). Through the trial, the man is linked back into his kinship ties, which he had severed through his act of violence. His connection to the family is further demonstrated as integral to the well-being of the community, as emphasized by the father “[h]olding it [his hand] so the people can see” (Bonnin 76). While the tale does not negate the longstanding effects of the violence (the family is bereft, there is emphasis on this being the father’s “only son”), it does emphasize that alternative kinship methods must come from a space of justice and continuance for the community to be well again (Bonnin 76). By valuing both biological and nonbiological kinship, “The Trial Path” presents Indigenous expansions of kinship as integral routes of healing and justice all while being framed through the connection of a grandmother and her granddaughter.

*Scroll over images to engage with their annotations*
*all images come from the public domain from the following: Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories. [Internet Archive] Brigham Young University, Washington: Hayworth Publishing House, 1921.*
[1] Though the man is not biologically related, he is routinely referred to as the “brother” of the man he murdered due to their love and affection for one another.